


cover your crystal eyes

by Russet



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, allura and her badassery in action, my queen!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-01
Updated: 2016-12-01
Packaged: 2018-09-03 11:26:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8710777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Russet/pseuds/Russet
Summary: Princess Allura is not too kind, or too soft, or too young. She isn't a delicate flower to be protected. There is steel in her bones and a storm in her eyes, and she is borne of the fire of her people. 
She is exactly what the universe needs in a saviour.





	

**Author's Note:**

> ayyy allura's the most badass character in this series. winner of human shot put ft shiro.

There’s a picture of her father by her bed.

He’s laughing, carrying her on his shoulders and pointing at some unknown mystery with delight. Perched on his wide, firm frame, she was but a child then, cheeks pinched with kid-like joy, a couple of teeth missing from the cute, petite set of her mouth.

On bad nights, she pushes the frame facedown so that she doesn’t have to look at his face.

The ceiling of her bedroom becomes a familiar sight on sleepless nights. Her tired eyes trace the gentle lines of the curtains by her bed, the soft blue glow of the lights, reminding her that the castle never sleeps. 

Sometimes, after startling awake from horrifying nightmares, the screams of children still ringing in her ears, she wanders to the holodeck.

Her fingers trail across the walls of the vast, open space, imagining the press of her father’s palm against hers, or her mother brushing her hair.

She used to pretend to herself that she could smell the sweet, innocent scent of native flowers, but even that has been tainted for her now.

Everything in her beloved childhood memories, of frolicking in meadows and sleeping in the castle library, curled up with a book in her lap, has been polluted with the trauma of fire and destruction, of seeing her father being ripped from her arms, time and again.

When it hurts too much to remember, she just stares. Pins her gaze on the harsh metal lines of the deck, reminds herself that this was her reality now. Cold steel and the cold eyes of Zarkon, holding a hand up as he swore fealty to the Altean kingdom.

It’s been so long, a wound of ten thousand years that should’ve healed, but stayed painfully open instead, every mission like salt on a cut, fizzling and hurting. 

The thing is, she wishes she could say that she’d never liked him a bit, that she’d always known something was up the moment he’d set foot in the castle, but it isn’t true.

He was charismatic, confident; traits a black paladin ought to have had, and their team seemed strong, carried by his shoulders.

Later on, she learnt that they’d never truly leaned on his shoulders. He had planted his crushing feet on the paladins, sullied their name as a stepping stone to his true objective - power.

He was ambitious. She thought it meant that he would lead their kingdom to glory, but instead he led it to ruin. She should’ve known better. They were like lambs led to slaughter, and the blood dripped from serene, calm hands - the steady hands of an executioner.

She remembers seeing her father bent over a table covered with maps and plans, reassuring his councilmen. 

“We will win,” he had said. “Zarkon will never sully the name of the Altean kingdom again.”

He was wrong.

She wishes she could say he was cowardly - hiding the lions had led to ten millennia of pain and suffering for the inhabitants of countless planets, stars, systems, without a defender in sight - but he did what he thought was for the best.

And so the universe went on suffering.

Genocide. That’s what it was. There isn’t a pleasant way to sugarcoat it. There is blood on all of their hands, Zarkon’s, her father’s, and hers. His for blighting the world with his ugly, cruel plans. Theirs for being helpless to stop him.

So she presses her nails into her palm - deep enough to cut. Lets her pure white Altean blood drip onto the floor, reminds herself that she is the last of the royal bloodline, last of her kind, save for Coran.

She must shoulder the responsibility to do what Altea couldn’t. She must take up the mantle of leadership, even without her father’s guidance.

“So young, to have to undergo so much,” Coran had said once in a moment of sentiment. He had never doubted her abilities - she would never let him - but she can see the concern shadowing his face when she insists on pushing herself past her limits.

She disagrees.

She is not too young, or too inexperienced, or too soft or innocent or kind. She is of Altean blood, and so she must adapt. Just as her body evolves with elongated limbs or twisted features to suit her environment, so must her mind.

She cannot afford to doubt herself. 

She shakes countless hands and memorises a galaxy’s worth of names, because no war is won without allies. She spends her days in the training deck sparring with the gladiators, returning blow after blow, reassured that none of the paladins could pin her down. She maps the known universe in her study, takes apart every hologram of the Galran stations, makes sure that there is no room for error, because it could kill them all.

She smiles and nods and gives commands with her back straight and her eyes ahead. She cannot falter.

At night, in the holodeck, she breathes.

It feels painful to inhale sometimes, like her lungs are splitting at the seams and the air will blow away like smoke. Like the energy in her body is struggling to escape, like her will is being battered down, mission after mission.

But she must go on smiling, healing, fixing anything she can.

She knows that there is no one else to step up to this mantle. Nobody wants to face death at war, and there is no other position in which death is so likely.

Leader of the rebellion, saviour of the people. Enemy of the Galran empire.

She takes pride in the target on her back. To be an enemy to a force so despicable is an honour. To offer hope to those liberated from their chains is a privilege.

She stands with bruises and cuts littering her world, and laughs, because even joy is a rebellion in this empire of destruction.

She dances with Arusians, lobs food in the halls of the castle, pokes fun at the paladins, teaches Hunk how to fix the particle barrier, presses a kiss to Shiro’s cheek and feels her heart flutter, and tells herself every day that it is okay to be happy.

She is borne of ash and death, but this is where the destruction ends.

She will spread peace and harmony and happiness to the people of this world.

She will fight to give them back what she has lost.

A family. A home.

In the photograph of her father, he seems brimming with pride for her, at her stout little hands and cheeky grin.

She likes to think that he would be proud of her now too.

The little girl who became a warrior, and a diplomat, and a leader.

A queen.

**Author's Note:**

> i couldn't contain my feelings about the almighty princess of altea. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


End file.
